


Let's Go Steal a Family

by Todesengel



Category: Leverage, The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 05:08:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29484195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Todesengel/pseuds/Todesengel
Summary: Still, she wishes, sometimes, that she'd been smart enough to establish an actual headquarters when she'd embarked on this half-baked plan for redemption rather than just gathering four master criminals in her apartment and hoping they'd understand things like boundaries and personal space.Or: in which Andy is a hitter looking for redemption with all the right people. (It'd probably go faster if Joe and Nicky would just get past the mortal enemies phase and fuck already)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 53





	Let's Go Steal a Family

**Author's Note:**

> This is a one shot that very likely isn't going to be developed any further because I suck at writing cons.

Andy can hear the fight in the hallway and after the day she's had it's almost enough to make her turn back around and head down to McRory's where she can sit in a booth and sulk for a while. But the thought of a shower and some icepacks for her eye and ribs – and the leftover baklava from the batch Nicky made two days ago – is enough to keep her moving forward. Besides, it's still her apartment damn it, no matter how much bullshit Nile spouts about landlord inspection rights, or how her kitchen is filled with Nicky's cookware, or the way Booker's preferred brand of whiskey keeps showing up on her counters, or how she's pretty sure she's been using Joe's shampoo for the past three weeks. If they want to fight, they can do it elsewhere and even though she's pretty sure she sprained something kicking one of the asshole security guards she'd tangled with earlier today, she knows she can still frog march her crew right out of her door if she needs to. Still, she wishes, sometimes, that she'd been smart enough to establish an actual headquarters when she'd embarked on this half-baked plan for redemption rather than just gathering four master criminals in her apartment and hoping they'd understand things like boundaries and personal space. 

"I was almost decapitated!" Joe yells as she opens the door, and Andy's hand tightens on the doorknob. She'd stopped paying attention to the comms right around the time the five expected security guards had somehow become ten, but she does vaguely recall a lot of shouting. She does a quick scan of the room, then relaxes when she sees that everyone is fine, though Joe's tuxedo has a few distinctive tears that Andy knows could only have come from beating a hasty retreat through some air ducts only Nicky would be crazy enough to suggest crawling through. 

"You were fine, you big baby," Nicky scoffs as he turns away from Joe to place a hard-sided case on the long briefing table they'd installed without Andy's permission. 

"I dunno," Nile says from where she's sitting beside Booker, because she's an opportunistic shit-stirrer. "From this angle it looked like a pretty close thing."

Nicky scoffs again and moves to peer over Nile's shoulder at something on her laptop. "There's at _least_ six inches between his head and the elevator. More than enough clearance." 

"People – _normal people_ – think that's not a lot of room at all!" Joe roars as he throws up his hands and stalks forward. He looks like he's about ready to hit Nicky and Andy knows he's been paying enough attention to her sporadic lessons on unarmed combat that it'd be a proper blow. 

"Report," Andy says before it can get that far. She slams the door shut behind her and stomps over to the kitchen to grab an ice pack from the freezer. "Did we get it?"

"Of course we did," Nicky says, affronted. "There was barely any security."

"Tell that to the ten guards I had to fight," Andy mutters as she slaps an icepack over her black eye. She sighs and turns back to face the rest of her crew. "Ok. So, what went wrong?"

"Why do you think something went wrong?" Booker asks, just the faintest slur to his words; Andy casts a quick look at the bottle by his elbow and wants to both sigh and smack the back of his head. Half-empty already and she was sure it'd been full yesterday morning. 

"Because there were only supposed to be _five_ guards, Booker," she snaps back. 

"Nothing would've gone wrong if Mister Sticky Fingers here hadn't decided to do some freelance thieving," Joe says. He points a finger at her which is how Andy knows he's truly pissed. "You need to do something about him, Boss. This isn't the first time he's gone completely off script."

"He was using a Koike Shoko as an _ashtray_ ," Nicky hisses, with the same furiously indignant tone he uses when Andy gets particularly blasphemous. 

"You didn't have to steal it right in front of the mark!" Joe shouts back. "Anyway, it's just a fucking piece of ugly ass pottery. _Ya Allah_ , it's not even worth that much!"

"Oh, so it's fine for _you_ to fuck off and get emotionally invested in the family drama of some mark and nearly blow everyone's cover," Nicky says with a sneer, "but when _I_ want to liberate art from philistines who don't appreciate it—"

"Enough," Andy says. She scowls and gestures at the case. "Show me the thing. The one for the client." 

"'The thing'," Nicky says mockingly, but he pulls on a pair of nitrile gloves before opening up the case and taking out the Chugach burial mask they'd been asked to retrieve. Nicky's face softens as he looks down reverentially at the plain wooden mask, staring at it with naked awe like it's the most precious thing in the world. Andy looks away, feeling almost like a voyeur, and her eye falls on Joe who is looking at Nicky with the same reverential awe and also like he's being eaten up with envy that he's not the one that can put that gentle smile on Nicky's face, that he's not the one being carefully cradled in Nicky's hands. 

"Jesus Christ," she mutters and facepalms hard enough she nearly gives herself another black eye. 

"You say something Boss?" Joe asks. 

"No," Andy says. She gestures at the mask with the ice pack before swapping it out for a fresh one to press against her right side where one of the guards had gotten a few lucky hits with his baton, hissing a little at the cold. "Nile, let the clients know we're ready to make the drop." 

"Sure thing, Andy," Nile says. She cuts a glance to where Nicky is putting the mask away with obvious reluctance and clears her throat. "Do you want to be there?"

"No, you and Nicky can do it," Andy says as she makes her way to the stairs that lead up to her bedroom, detouring just enough to snag Booker's bottle. She takes a long swig, relishing the burn of the cheap booze, then wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and pins Booker with a glare. "Not one of your better efforts, Book."

"Sorry Boss," Booker mutters before taking a pointed sip from his glass; Andy snorts – like he has any standing to pretend that he's the civilized one here. "But shit happens. That's why I always have a plan M."

"I hate plan M," Joe says. "I _die_ in plan M."

"I love plan M," Nicky says as he moves into the kitchen and starts pulling ingredients out of the fridge. "We should always do plan M."

"Fuck you," Joe says. "Hey Book, which one is the one where Nicky dies a horribly embarrassing death by falling off a building while naked? Let's do that one next time."

"Really guys?" Nile says as Nicky begins shouting in Italian and shaking a knife at Joe. 

Andy sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose; she's pretty sure Nicky just called Joe "annoyingly handsome" and she knows that if she has to spend one more minute watching the two of them be mutually oblivious idiots at each other she's going to do something stupid like lock them in a closet and demand they either fuck or fight each other until they figure their shit out. She levels a stern look at Nile and points at her with the neck of the bottle. "I'm taking a shower. _Do not_ knock down any more of my walls."

*

She finds the package after her shower. The sight of it feels like a punch to the solar plexus; like that time she'd let Quynh talk her into wearing a corset and they'd ended up having to fight their way out of an underground lobster fighting ring; like the day she'd walked away from everything she'd ever loved because she realized she didn't recognize who she was anymore. Her heart aches; her lungs burn; the depth of her grief, of her regret, of her shame surprises her yet again.

She takes a deep breath and forces herself to open the package slowly. 

A burner phone and a phone number for someplace in Cyprus shouldn't make her feel so much hope she thinks as she stares down at the contents of the package. It's a foolish thing to hope for, anyway. She knows that it won't be Quynh on the other end of that number. She _knows_ this, knows it with all the bone deep certainty that she knows that even if she's broken everything between them by leaving Quynh behind, by being the one to get them involved with Moreau in the first place because she'd been too blind to see that what he offered wasn't the kind of family they'd both longed for, she'll never stop trying to make things right. 

And yet, she still can't stop the disappointment that twists sour and bitter in her mouth when she dials the number and hears The Greek's voice instead of Quynh's. 

"What've you got?" she asks, swallowing past the lump in her throat.

"Mark Vector. Recently took a plea deal on an SEC investigation. Deep ties with Moreau," The Greek says. 

"And?" Andy asks, and she smirks when she hears The Greek's long-suffering sigh. 

"And he bilked a decent man out of his retirement money. Nearly beat him to death too," The Greek says. 

"Ok," Andy says with something that's not quite relief; she's pretty sure her crew would've still taken the job even if Vector hadn't quite fit the mold for the kind of marks she's been targeting, but she's not quite ready to come clean about everything. Not while they're all still occasionally tripping across each other's jagged edges; not while it sometimes still feels like the right blow in the right place might fracture everything. 

She suspects that coming clean that she's trying to take down Damien Moreau is going to be less of a blow and more like a carpet bombing; she can only hope that when the truth of what she was – the truth of what she's done, of why she did it, of who she did it to and for and with – comes out, this tentative thing they've been building together is going to be strong enough to survive it. 

She's not sure what she'll do if it isn't. 

"We'll drop the file on Vector in the usual spot in three days."

"Ok," Andy says again, and then, because she's always been a glutton for punishment, says, "How is she?"

The Greek's silence is ominous, and Andy closes her eyes, prepares herself as best she can for whatever mortal blow she knows is coming. 

"She's in the wind," The Greek says at last. "We don't know if she's still with Moreau." 

"Oh," Andy says, though it's barely more than a whispery exhalation, the word punched out of her by the sharp mix of emotions running through her – hope and fear and the desperate ache of longing.

"Three days," The Greek says. "We'll contact you again when Vector's no longer on the board." 

Andy nods as she hangs up though she knows they can't see her – though fuck it, maybe they can, because she can't believe The Greek and his minions broke through her security measures, not to mention Nile's, just to drop off a package in her room. She thinks she should be more upset by this, but she can't be, not now, not with the knowledge that Quynh might have left Moreau; that Quynh might be looking for her; that Quynh might be coming home. 

She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, recentering herself with the movement of air through her lungs. She can still feel the flutter of hope deep in her chest, like a fist gently squeezing her heart. Even though nothing's really changed, everything still feels lighter; it feels like she's been down at the bottom of a deep well for so long and she's just caught her first hazy glimpse of the sky.

A knock on the door startles her and she shoves the burner phone under her pillow just as Nile opens the door.

"Andy?" Nile says. "Dinner's ready. Also, I think Nicky's like two seconds away from braining Joe with a frying pan." 

"Tell him he's paying for my security deposit if he gets blood on my floors," Andy says, proud of the way her voice doesn't quaver. 

"As your landlord, I think I ought to tell you that that security deposit is long gone," Nile says. 

"Yeah, yeah. Go downstairs and make sure we aren't going to be picking bits of skull out of our food," Andy says. 

"Gross Andy," Nile says, her voice fading as she goes down the stairs.

Andy takes another deep breath and stands up. She glances at the hidden phone and feels a smile tug at her lips as she hears Joe shout something unspeakably dirty in Arabic while Nile cackles with glee. 

_Come home soon, Quynh_ , she thinks as she heads out the door. _I can't wait for you to meet the family I stole._


End file.
